Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I will not take but a moment longer. I think it is fair to allow the majority leader to regain the floor. The Senate I know and the Senate I studied was not about limiting debate. It was not about having a Rules Committee of one, it was about unlimited debate, germane but unlimited. It was about amendments. It was about using the parliamentary rules we have in a fair and straightforward way to advance what you thought was best for this country. The majority leader has the toughest position in this body. It is a hard job. There is no question. I defer to his judgment. I am not critical of his judgment. I am sorry for the Senate that we are to the point now where we can only move legislation when it is approved and the amendments are approved by the majority leader and his leadership. I think that fails the test of our Founders' version of the Senate. I think we will rue the day that we have gone down this path. But I will continue to use every parliamentary maneuver I know to lessen Washington's wasteful spending, to pass good bills and make them better and not to say that just because you do not approve of a unanimous consent request that you do not have something to offer. The fact is, we have passed 855 bills by unanimous consent. I may have let too many go. But the fact is we negotiated with a lot of people and got a lot of bills through. The frustration factor is part of the Senate. Working together we solve problems, working against each other what we do is we lower the rate of acceptability and confidence in this body to the 9 percent it has today. My hat is off to Harry Reid for the amount of time he has put in, the amount of effort he puts in it. I would hope he would choose to go a different way, reaching across the aisle, working across the aisle. Everybody's ideas have value. Everybody's input should be offered and there should be real negotiation. One last comment. This omnibus package of bills had 34 bills in it. There were only three bills that I absolutely opposed, nine bills I never objected to at all. And every other bill in that I made an offer to reach out, offer amendments, offer suggestions. Most of the time it was flatly rejected: We are going to roll over you. You cannot have input. If that is the way the Senate operates, then we are going to be back here a lot of times in the future. I know, pretty heady times, thinking that we may not have the power to do that. But that power, if it goes away, will not last for very long being in absence. It will be back. The American people get it. This country is on a crashing course, financially. Fiscally, we cannot handle what is happening to us. Until we start handling the problems now that are going to be the crisis in the future, we will fail the American public. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. I was not aware of that.

Mr. COBURN. I am.

Mr. COBURN. I was aware of that.

Mr. COBURN. I was aware.

Mr. COBURN. I thank the Senator from Pennsylvania for his question. I think you accurately assessed it. The fact is, this country has an energy crisis. We have chosen not to address American resources for that. We have chosen to do anything but that, and that is why we have seen bill after bill forcing political votes rather than solving the real problem Americans want the Senate to address, which is how do we stop sending $700 billion of our treasure out of this country every year, knowing we are going to be on carbon-based energy for at least the next 20 to 30 years, and how do we use American resources. You are absolutely right. That is the real question. That is what we should be about. That is why Republicans stood and said the thing the American people are interested in is us addressing the issues that are impacting them directly today, the $2,400 per family, trying to get to work or get to school. The question the Senator asked is absolutely right. The real question is energy and trying to take us off energy and run out the clock and not deal with this before we go on summer break.

Mr. COBURN. I think the Senator makes a good point. The answer to that is yes. As a matter of fact, we would have been halfway through this bill had cloture not been filed when it was introduced at the same time, as we just saw on the bills this evening. A bill is introduced, cloture is filed at the moment of introduction, as it was with the Advancing America's Priorities or, as I call it, the Grow Government and Spend More of Your Grandkids' Money bill, the point being we could have already accomplished half of what this country needs had we had an open amendment process that was germane to the energy needs of this country.

Mr. COBURN. They said they needed one-third of what the bill authorized.

Mr. COBURN. Yes, it has, by three-quarters.

Mr. COBURN. Absolutely not.

Mr. COBURN. I have a concern with the money authorized in this bill that will be wasted and appropriated when we have not taken care of a large amount of the waste in the Justice Department.

Mr. COBURN. I will.

Mr. COBURN. I have.

Mr. COBURN. I answer the Senator from Pennsylvania by saying yes, he was. No majority leader should fill the tree, Republican or Democrat. It goes against the best traditions of the Senate. It goes against the tradition of full debate and full amendment. Our energy problems could be solved tomorrow as far as this bill. We could ask a unanimous consent to withdraw the amendments filling the tree. If we had unanimous consent to do that, we could have open amendments with the provision there would only be germane amendments to the energy needs of this country. We could do that, but we have moved from debate about what is in the best interests of this country to what is in the best interests of the next political election. That is what this debate is about. It is not about energy. It is not about what is in the best interests of the next two generations. It is not what is in the best interests of the Nation from a national security standpoint or energy security standpoint. It is about what is best for the next election. We need to get away from that. Regrettably, Republican leaders have used it but never to the extent of 15 times has it ever--it has not been used 15 times in total until the present leader has exercised it 15 times. He has cut off debate and all amendments.

Mr. COBURN. I am.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Illinois. I thank him for his debating skills and his heartfelt positions. I guess the first thing I would say is the Appropriations Committee spends $875 billion every year that is not authorized. The Senator from Illinois knows that. The second thing I would say is there is no ability to amend any of these bills in the appropriations process, unless you are on the Appropriations Committee. So if you are not on the subcommittee, you can't amend it. If you are not on the main committee, you can't amend it. Last year, we couldn't amend anything because the omnibus bill came to the floor without any ability to amend it. So we haven't had any opportunity to amend it. It is whatever the appropriators say goes. There is no amendment with that. I am not going to get into the debate. I am as disgusted with Republican spending priorities as the Senator from Illinois is. I will correct the record on real accounting principles. We had 1 year, and 1 year only, of a true surplus, 1999. The rest of the years we didn't have a surplus, if you count what we borrowed from Social Security. I would not defend any of the spending of this President or this Congress, but I will make it known the President cannot spend the first penny until Congress passes the bills. I note that over the last 18 months, his party has not been in charge. A different party has been in charge. The bills that have gone to him have been controlled by the majority party. Look, both of us admit that our children are in tall weeds right now if we don't start doing something about our fiscal situation. The final point I will make is most of these bills would take less than an hour. Every one of them I have communicated on and I am happy to see on the floor. Give me the right to offer one significant amendment and one amendment for every billion dollars. I will debate it for 15 minutes, have two votes, and we will be done with the bills. Nobody is withholding anybody's right to vote for a bill. The majority leader can put any bill he wants on the floor at any time, with my agreement to never try to dilatate, never try to spread it out, to only bring pertinent amendments that are germane and do that in a very short period of time. He knows that. The Senator from Illinois has known that. That has been the way I work. I don't play the games of political position to spin something. My hope is--and I have a great relationship with the Senator from Illinois. I value his friendship. He is not ``just my friend,'' he is a friend. It is not the collegial statement of the body, it is Dick Durbin is my friend. My hope is that when Dick Durbin and I can pass three significant bills out of our subcommittee that make a real difference in the world of human rights, that if we can do that, then certainly the Senate can come together on energy and all these other bills. My hope is we will do that. I do not want to delay our staff or the Presiding Officer any longer. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. COBURN. That is correct. The bill as offered brought that number down to $360-some million, which was never offered to me but was in the bill as it came to the floor.

Mr. COBURN. I first raised reservations on this bill when it first came up.

Mr. COBURN. And have it paid for out of wasted funds at the Justice Department.

Mr. COBURN. I thank the Chair.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I listened to the majority leader and the distinguished colleague from California. I anticipate what I will hear from the Senator from Illinois. One of the first observations I had is that we have shut down debate on the Senate today because we came in at 3 o'clock. We have 30 minutes to debate whether on a motion to proceed, we will proceed to spend $11 billion. We can dispute, if we are going to authorize it, whether we intend to spend it. That is what your press release says, Senator Durbin; that is what Senator Boxer's says. You intend to spend it. If you don't intend to spend it, then offset it and the authorizations won't make any difference. It is $10 billion-plus in new spending. It creates 36 new Federal programs, some of which I am for. It puts a ban on the sale of nonhuman primates across State lines. That is probably not a big deal. We could be spending time on true American energy independence, which has to do with national security. We could spend time on lowering gas prices. We could spend time on eliminating wasteful Washington spending. The statement by the minority leader was that he will offer us a chance to come back to this, but we are going to spend 60 hours on this, 30 hours postcloture and 30 hours on the other, so we won't ever get back to energy, and he knows that. We will not get back to energy if we take up this bill. So the question that is before us is--today, the President announced, with our help--and the President cannot spend any money without Congress's help--we will have the highest budget deficit on record in this country--highest ever. It is $2,900 per man, woman, and child in this country--money we are going to spend that we don't have and that we are charging to your children and grandchildren. This is a debate about priorities. Nine of the bills in this package I have no objection to. They could have gone through. The majority leader knows that. There are about five of the bills I adamantly oppose. We have 46,800 dog bites a year. That is not business we should be working on now. That is local. So is subhuman primates. If you count the money we are going to steal from Social Security, that is another $100 billion. We are going to take it and put an IOU in for Social Security. What is this bill about? This bill is about trying to bust the process here, where we start thinking about the future. We are going to say it doesn't spend any money, that it doesn't have any effect on the budget. We are going to say there is no real cost until it gets appropriated. But the fact is if we authorize another $10 billion in spending--and I note also in the letter that the majority leader asked to be submitted into the Record, if authorized and appropriated, it would spend $11 billion. Well, it is unconscionable to me that someone would support a bill that did not work hard to make sure it is appropriated. If you are not going to do that, then you are not true to the very people you are saying you want this bill to take action for. The people supporting this bill have every intention of having the money spent. Let's not kid ourselves. So if the intention is to spend the money, the money is going to get spent. That is how we got to a national debt--that is how we have an $85 trillion unfunded liability in front of us. It is not wrong to want to try to fix that. It is not wrong to try to address issues. The ALS Registry is something the CDC can already do. As a matter of fact, their own quote on it was that they spend only $29 million a year on ALS. We are going to spend $75 million on a registry that doesn't cure anybody. Why don't we spend $75 million additional on research for ALS? Why don't we spend this $10 billion at NIH so we cover all of the diseases, where we can make a major impact? No, we want to respond to interest groups and lobbyists, and we want to go home and say we have done something, when we have not done anything except raise costs. There is $300 billion worth of waste, without a doubt, every year that occurs--waste, fraud, or duplication in this country. This body doesn't want to offset it. The majority leader, as well as many of the Members and authors of these other bills, have been offered commonsense offsets to pay for their bills. Just like every family does, when you have something new you want to do and you have a limited budget, what do you do? You make a choice, you decide a priority, and then you decide what you would not do so you can do what you want to do. We don't do that in the Senate. We conveniently charge it to our grandkids. What nobody realizes is this past Saturday, the Senate and the House increased the debt limit by $800 billion. Most Americans didn't even know that. It was tucked very neatly into the housing bill. We increased the debt limit $800 billion--$800 billion more we are going to borrow. People will say: Senator Coburn, you are for the war, you supported the war. But I did not vote for the appropriations bills for the war, and there is a reason for it. Because we should be paying for it. We should be making the hard choices instead of charging the war to our kids. This is a debate I am glad we are finally having. Part of me says I would love to get on it, but the most important thing we need to do and the most important thing the Senate needs to be doing is working on energy. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. COBURN. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I yield 1 minute to Senator DeMint, Senator Sessions, and Senator Burr, in that order.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, the answer to that question is everyone who has a bill in this, outside the nine that have never been hotlined or approved in the past, every one has been offered amendments to offset spending out of the duplication of waste that is already going on.